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TruRating gets £9.5m, Uber China merges with Didi Chuxing & more in your Week in Tech

TWIT Emily 04/08/16

Welcome to your Week in Tech – a roundup of the week’s top technology news.

In this episode, we bring you TruRating’s £9.5m funding round, the UK government’s partnership with FinTech startup Credits, Uber China’s merge with Didi Chuxing and an app that can turn your Instagram photos into cash!

Watch the video, or read on for all this and more.

Investments

On-demand laundry and dry cleaning services application Laundrapp landed £5m in funding from undisclosed investors. This brings the London-based company’s total investment to £10m.

Customer service tech startup TruRating has announced the closure of a £9.5m Series A funding round, led by international investment office Sandaire. Based in London, TruRating enables retailers and restaurants to get real-time feedback by asking customers to rate their experience at checkout.

Privacy-enhancing software company Privitar landed £3m in a funding round led by venture capital firm Illuminate Financial Management. The company says it will use the funds to accelerate growth in the UK and expand its European footprint.

Office catering platform City Pantry raised £1.1m in new funding from existing investors including the Angel CoFund and The London Co-Investment Fund. The round also drew support from various angel investors.

Best of British

The UK government now has its first official blockchain provider for public services. Public sector organisations will be able to use blockchain technology for the first time, as the government has approved FinTech startup Credits as one of its suppliers.

Credits offers a platform for creating custom, interoperable blockchains. It has already been working with the Isle of Man Government on a number of use cases for distributed ledger technology.

International story

Overseas, Uber China is in the process of merging with rival taxi firm Didi Chuxing. Uber launched in the country two years ago, but is yet to make a profit there.

It’s been reported that, as part of the deal, Didi Chuxing will invest $1bn into Uber’s global company. In return, it will gain Uber’s brand, business and data in China.

Download

Our ‘Download of the Week’ is Takumi, an app that connects brands with influencers on Instagram. It’s aimed at ‘micro-influencers’ with between 1,000 and 50,000 followers.

Influencers are matched to appropriate brand campaigns then they get to select the campaigns they want to take part in and then get paid within 48 hours.

In this week’s video, we speak to Sam Barrett, the company’s head of business development, to find out more.

And Finally…

And finally, Apple announced it is releasing over 100 new and re-designed emojis later this year.

The swap will come when Apple rolls out its new operating system –  iOS 10 – and will see the black gun emoji changed for a green water pistol.

Many of the current occupational emojis will be available in female versions, such as a female weightlifter and female engineer.

That’s it for this episode of The Week in Tech. For more technology news, take a look at our home page, and follow us on Twitter.

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